Mourners: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery)

by Bill Pronzini

  “Oh, well, you know . . . getting along.”

  “How’s the new book coming?”

  “Slowly. Very slowly. At my age it’s difficult to concentrate.”

  “You’ve never had trouble concentrating before.”

  “Yes, well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  Finally one of the waitresses appeared. She left menus, went away with Kerry’s order for a glass of Dry Creek Chardonnay. Cybil opened her menu immediately and gave it her full attention. Kerry didn’t touch hers.

  I hate this, she thought. God, I hate this!

  They sat like strangers for a length of time that seemed to stretch and expand. The restaurant was crowded; dining noises ebbed and flowed around them. She could feel the tension building, a headache beginning to pulse behind her eyes. Get with it, she thought. The longer you wait, the harder it’ll be.

  Yes, all right, but not until the waitress comes back with the wine.

  “I think I’ll have the Moroccan salad,” Cybil said.

  “That sounds good.”

  “Everything here is good. You haven’t even looked at your menu.”

  “I’ve been here before, too, remember?”

  Cybil sighed and sipped Chardonnay between pursed lips.

  The waitress again, and none too soon. Cybil gave her order. Kerry said, “The same,” and reached for her glass. She had to resist the impulse to gulp half of the wine, settled for a large sip.

  “Good, isn’t it?”

  “Fine,” she said, and all of a sudden her mind seemed to go blank.

  All morning she’d been framing and discarding ways to broach the subject to Cybil, eventually decided the direct approach was best. Not blunt, not emotional, just quietly reasonable. She’d worked out a nice little opening speech, silently rehearsed it a number of times—and now she couldn’t remember a word of it. She felt her face start to flush. The wine again, a larger swallow, but all that did was increase the heat until she was sure she was a bright moist red.

  Cybil was watching her. “Go ahead and say it,” she said.

  “Say what?”

  “What you came to say. The reason for this lunch.”

  Open door, unlocked by Cybil herself. But all Kerry could think of to say was, “Why do I have to have a reason to take you to lunch?”

  “Kerry, I may be old, but I’m in full possession of my faculties. Something is bothering you—I could hear it in your voice when you called with the invitation. Something you feel more comfortable discussing in public. In order, I suppose, to avoid an emotional scene.”

  “Yes, something’s bothering me. And you know what it is.”

  “Why can’t you just let sleeping dogs lie?”

  “Because I can’t. Not anymore.”

  “Why not? Why is it so important to you?”

  “For God’s sake, don’t you think I have a right to know?”

  “If the circumstances were different, yes.”

  “That’s an evasion,” Kerry said. “I won’t be put off this time—I mean it. If I can’t get the truth out of Bill, I’m going to get it from you. Right here and now.”

  “You believe I’d confide in your husband but not you?”

  “Well, he knows. He’s a good detective, he must have figured it out somehow. And then he confronted you and you told him the whole story. Is that the way it was?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I have. He just keeps stonewalling. Did you swear him to secrecy? He’d never break a promise to you.”

  “I didn’t swear him to secrecy.”

  “All right, then, it was a joint decision. The two of you trying to protect me. Well, it’s misguided. I don’t need protecting, I need to know the truth. I’ve had all I can stand of secrets and lies.”

  Cybil drained her glass before she said, “I’ve never lied to you, Kerry.”

  “Not openly, maybe. Lies of omission are still lies.”

  “Only if they stem from certain knowledge.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “You want to know the truth. But the fact is, I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself. Not beyond any doubt.”

  “Another evasion.”

  “No, it isn’t. Kerry . . .”

  “You and Russ Dancer, dammit. You had an affair with him, didn’t you.”

  “I did not. You know how I felt about the man.”

  “Later, yes. Not how you felt about him during the war.”

  “I tolerated him then. I hated him afterward.”

  “After D-day.”

  “After the war ended, yes.”

  “Ivan was in Washington on D-day. Did you and Dancer celebrate together? Is that when you slept with him?”

  “I would never have voluntarily slept with that man.”

  “You had other affairs. With that pulp editor, Frank Colodny, for one.”

  Cybil winced. “Mistakes, foolish youthful mistakes. But never with Dancer. Never.”

  “Then why were you so upset by that envelope he left you when he died? What was in the letter he wrote you, what was in his unpublished manuscript? What’s the real significance of D-day?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Isn’t it? Cybil, I can count to nine—I was born nine months after D-day. Was Ivan really my father? Or was it Russ Dancer?”

  Out, now. All the way out into the open and lying there between them like the scab off an open wound. Cybil squeezed her eyes shut for three or four seconds. An expression of pain mixed with bitterness changed the shape of her face.

  “No!” she said in a fierce whisper.

  “But he could be, couldn’t he? That’s what you’ve been hiding, you and Bill, these past three months.”

  “Ivan was your father. Ivan.”

  “You want it to be Ivan, but you’re not one hundred percent positive.”

  “Ivan, Ivan, Ivan!”

  “But it could have been Dancer. I can see it in your face.” She caught Cybil’s hand, held it tight in both of hers. “Why won’t you admit it? Don’t you understand, I have to know! Today, now, right now!”

  Her voice sounded strained, desperate, too-loud in her own ears. Cybil’s stare was not the only one directed at her; all the eyes made her shrink inside herself, her skin feel loose and prickly.

  Cybil’s mouth moved; Kerry could barely hear the words. “Why? Why the sudden urgency?”

  Lies of omission, secrets—she was as guilty of them as Cybil and Bill. Put an end to hers here and now. She’d known she might have to; it couldn’t be concealed much longer anyway. Come clean as she was making Cybil come clean.

  “Medical reasons,” she said.

  “I don’t . . . what do you mean?”

  “If there’s any chance that Dancer was my father, it means my medical history might be different. Different inherited genes, good and bad. I have a doctor’s appointment later this afternoon—that’s why I have to know now.”

  “. . . Doctor’s appointment?”

  “With a surgeon. For a biopsy.”

  “Oh my God!”

  10

  Stonestown, off Nineteenth Avenue near San Francisco State University and Lake Merced, was the city’s first big shopping mall, built in the sixties to serve west side and Daly City residents. In its early years it had been open-air, with shops off a central courtyard and side ells that were like arctic tundras whenever the wind and fog came howling in off the ocean. As a result the flow of shoppers dwindled steadily and a number of businesses closed down. The entire mall probably would have shut down in the late eighties, if it hadn’t been for a group of developers who took it over and spent millions renovating and enclosing it. All sorts of new retail blood poured into the new Stones-town Galleria, including department stores and chain stores, and the shoppers came back in droves. It had been a thriving operation ever since, and despite high rents, that meant a long waiting list for available space. However long Drew Casement had been in business the
re, he must be doing pretty well to keep on meeting his monthly nut.

  Westside Pro Sports was a large, deep space along one of the short side ells. In keeping with the time of year, most of the upfront displays were of summer pursuits: baseball equipment, golf paraphernalia. The rest of the store was crowded with fishing and hunting apparatus, half a dozen customers, one twenty-something clerk earnestly trying to sell an item called a subcontinental adventure travel pack to a dubious teenager, and a sun-browned, well-set-up guy in his late thirties marking down prices on a rack of pro football jerseys. I figured the tanned guy for Drew Casement—right age, and a walking advertisement for the healthy sporting life—and that was who he was.

  Casement was expecting me; I’d called from the office to make sure he was in before driving out here. He didn’t waste any time after I identified myself. Just pumped my hand once, said he was glad to meet me, and led the way into a cluttered private office at the rear.

  No wasted time in there, either. He said as soon as he shut the door, “What’ve you found out about Jim? Is it another woman?”

  “That’s doubtful,” I said.

  “Doubtful? Then you’re not sure?”

  “We’re reasonably sure it isn’t.”

  “What’s going on then? What’s the matter with him?”

  “I can’t say, Mr. Casement.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both. My reports go directly to my client, no one else.”

  “Lynn and I don’t have any secrets.”

  “Then you can get the details from her when the time comes.”

  “You haven’t told her anything yet?”

  “There’s nothing definite to tell at this point. That’s why I’m here. Gathering information, trying to piece things together.”

  He ran a hand over his face. He was clean-shaven, but he had a heavy beard shadow; longish fingernails made a faint rasping noise in the bristles, like the wheeze of an asthmatic. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to push myself at you. It’s just that I’m worried about Jim. Lynn, too.”

  “Sure. Understood.”

  “I’ll help in any way I can, but . . .” He made a helpless gesture. “If I knew anything I’d’ve told Lynn right away. Jim is . . . well, he’s shrink-wrapped.”

  “How’s that again?”

  “Oh, you know, not a guy who’ll open up to anybody about anything, even his wife. She must’ve told you that. Sometimes you have to work just to get him to talk about sports or the weather.”

  “You’ve known him since high school, is that right?”

  “Right,” Casement said. “Senior year at Lafayette High. His family moved over there from Moraga the summer before. He didn’t have any friends, never made friends easy. Funny, in a way, that the two of us ever hooked up.”

  “How so?”

  “I was a jock back then—football, baseball. One of the cool crowd, lots of chicks, always partying. I didn’t study much and my grades got so low I came close to being declared academically ineligible partway through football season. Jim . . . well, he was the nerd type. Smart, real smart. His best subjects were my worst: history, math. So I asked him to help me out, and he did.”

  “Tutored you.”

  “That’s it. Once we got to know each other, spent some time together, we hit it off. The old opposites thing, I guess. He was never easy to talk to, but once you got past his . . . what’s the word?”

  “Reticence?”

  “Yeah, reticence. Once you got past that he still didn’t say much, but what he did say made sense. He helped me and I helped him. He’d always been a loner, shy, still a virgin in his senior year.” Casement grinned. “I took care of that little problem for him. Got him some dates, got him laid more than once before graduation.”

  “Did he ever say anything about his childhood?”

  “You mean what happened with his friend’s parents? No. Never. I asked him about it once, and he just wouldn’t deal with it.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I don’t remember exactly,” Casement said. “It wasn’t a secret or anything and I guess somebody mentioned it—my old man, maybe, he was always going on about violence in our society.”

  “Do you know if Troxell ever talked to his wife about what happened?”

  “If he did, she never mentioned it to me. You think that could have something to do with the way Jim’s acting now?”

  “It’s possible. Do you?”

  “Well . . . it happened so long ago, more than twenty-five years.”

  “Some people never get over that kind of shock.”

  “Yeah. I can see that.”

  “A few develop a kind of morbid preoccupation with death,” I said.

  “Is that right? How so?”

  “They think about it constantly. Read and talk about it. Develop obsessive interests in violent crime. Attend funerals, even the funerals of strangers.”

  “None of that sounds like Jim.”

  “He never expressed or exhibited any particular interest in violent crime?”

  “Not to me. I mean, the subject’s come up, sure, how can you avoid it these days? He hates all that crazy shit, same as I do. But he puts the blame on the wrong horse. Only serious argument we ever had was over gun control.”

  “So you’d say he’s strongly antiviolence?”

  “Absolutely. Bleeding heart, victims’ rights type of guy.”

  Like me. But all I said was, “Nonviolent himself.”

  “Oh, sure. Jim wouldn’t hurt a fly. At least . . .” Casement paused. “What about the idea of suicide?”

  “What about it?”

  “That’s another sign of preoccupation with death, isn’t it?”

  “It can be. Why?”

  “Well, something Jim said to me when we were having the gun control argument. I just remembered it. I said suppose somebody attacked him, could he kill in self-defense. He said, ‘No, the only person I could ever kill is myself.’ ”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “You bet I did. Something like ‘Don’t tell me you’ve thought of knocking yourself off.’ He said yes, he’d entertained the notion. Those were his exact words, entertained the notion. He meant it, too. He wasn’t kidding around.”

  “Did he elaborate, give you a reason?”

  “Uh-uh. I said, man, you’ve got everything to live for—beautiful wife, money, nice home, great job—why would you ever think about a thing like that? He just shook his head and changed the subject.”

  “Did it ever come up again?”

  “No,” Casement said. “Christ, that couldn’t be it, could it? What’s going on with him now?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “But if it is, why now all of a sudden?”

  “There’d have to be some kind of provocation,” I said. “Even people who’ve thought about suicide over a long period of time don’t suddenly decide to do away with themselves.”

  “You mean something has to push them into it.”

  “A trigger, yes.”

  “What would do it?”

  “Severe shock, emotional upheaval.”

  “Something he saw? Like when he was a kid?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Casement said, “A few weeks ago, right around the time he started acting weird, I stopped by their house and he was even quieter than usual. I asked him what was wrong. He said, ‘I saw something, Drew.’ I asked him what’d he seen. He wouldn’t say. All he’d say was ‘I wish to God I’d gone straight home that night.’ ”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “Near as I can remember.”

  “He give you any idea which night he meant?”

  “No.”

  “Or where he was or had been that night?”

  “Uh-uh. Just closed right up again.”

  “But you’re sure the conversation took place a few weeks ago? Late March, early April?”

  “Had to’ve been right
around the first of April.”

  “Was his wife there at the time?”

  “Not in the room with us, no.”

  “Did you say anything to her about what he’d said?”

  “I meant to, but I didn’t. Didn’t seem all that important, went right out of my mind.”

  “And he didn’t bring it up again?”

  “I’d remember if he had.”

  11

  TAMARA

  Horace called the office again at one thirty.

  “Tamara, listen to me, please. I didn’t sleep much last night, haven’t been able to stop thinking about how we left things yesterday. I can’t stand the idea of you hating me, after everything we had together. Can’t we—”

  That was as far as she let him get before she banged his ear.

  She thought about putting the answering machine on in case he called back. Didn’t do it. Didn’t want to hear his voice again. Damn the man! He’d gone and hooked up with Mary from Rochester, he was through with Tamara from San Francisco and she was through with him, why couldn’t he just leave her be so she could get on with her life?

  Until his call, some numbness had started to set in. Hadn’t been an easy morning with Bill hanging in the office, giving her the kind of looks Pop used to—you couldn’t keep anything from that man, not for long. Word! What she needed today wasn’t paternal understanding, what she needed was to be left alone. Better after he went on out. Not as much trouble concentrating, able to throw herself deep enough into her work to keep her mind off Horace and the sorry state of her love life. Everything was humming along on the professional side—they’d have to hire another investigator if their caseload got much heavier—and then all of a sudden the personal side turns to shit. And wasn’t that always the way with her? Get one part straightened out and running smooth, and bang, something else screws up. Like she was cursed or something. Like somebody somewhere kept making voodoo Tamara dolls and sticking pins in them.

  The phone didn’t ring again.

  Yeah, but Horace wouldn’t give up. Fool would call again, here or at the apartment, and keep on trying to punk her. She knew him so well . . . that side of him anyway. Stubborn. Once he got an idea in his head, you couldn’t yank it out with a pair of pliers. And the idea now was to get her to say okay, sure, I forgive you, big guy, let’s be friends, and then he’d feel better about himself and what he’d done and go on doing the nasty with his Mary from Rochester with a clear conscience. Well, it wasn’t gonna happen. No way. She’d keep right on banging his ear until he let her be, no matter how long it took.